The Hound of the Baskervilles

The Hound of the Baskervilles — Week 4 of 8 Chapters VII & VIII. Read along with us in The Weekly Serial app

Everyone on the moor is hiding something.

Barrymore lied about the sobbing. The postmaster’s boy delivered the telegram to Mrs Barrymore, not to Barrymore himself — so Holmes’s clever ruse proved nothing. Beryl Stapleton warns Watson to leave Dartmoor immediately, then runs half a mile across the moor to retract it before her brother notices she’s gone. Stapleton himself watches Watson with small, light eyes that miss nothing, smile fixed, butterfly net in hand, giving nothing away.

And somewhere out there on the moor, Selden the Notting Hill murderer is still hiding in the dark.

Watson puts it better than anyone could:

Ok Holmes got got this week and it was kind of great to watch.

Every lead in London falls apart. Barrymore was at the Hall the whole time, not the guy in the cab. The Times page is gone from every bin near Charing Cross. And the cabman reveals the mystery fare gave his own name before vanishing into Waterloo Station.

The name was Sherlock Holmes. He's just been trolled by his own opponent, and to his credit he takes it well. "A touch, Watson, an undeniable touch." No sulking, genuine respect.

So it's off to Dartmoor. The train ride down does so much work, green England slowly turning bleak and grey outside the window, until Mortimer just goes "there is your first sight of the moor." Chills.

Then they roll up to the Hall itself. Iron gates, boars' heads gone green with lichen, and waiting at the door is…

The Hound of the Baskervilles — Week 3 of 8 Chapters V & VI  Read along with us in The Weekly Serial app

Holmes is beaten.

Not dramatically. Not with a villain’s flourish. Just quietly, methodically, thread by thread.

By the end of Chapter V three separate lines of investigation have collapsed. Barrymore is confirmed at the Hall so not the bearded man in the cab. The cut page from The Times has vanished from every waste-paper basket in the hotels around Charing Cross. And the cabman, John Clayton, delivers the final blow: his mysterious fare gave a name before disappearing into Waterloo Station.

The name was Sherlock Holmes.

Ok so this week I'm just fully in Holmes-appreciation mode.

The map thing got me. He doesn't even go to Dartmoor. Just sends Watson out for tobacco, shuts himself in with a pile of pipe smoke and an Ordnance Survey map, and by the time Watson gets back he's basically already been there and back in his head! "My spirit has hovered over it all day." Who talks like that and also somehow earns it.

And then straight after that he loses the guy in the cab. Bushy beard, watching Sir Henry, gone into traffic before Holmes can catch him. He's properly annoyed about it too, and tells Watson to write it down as a failure.

Then we have Sir Henry straight off the boat from Canada, more rancher than aristocrat by the sound of it, and already being watched before he's even chosen a hotel.

Anyway - who do…